Chapter 82
Maybe we should be grateful that Ha Suyeon’s ears, overworked by the sudden deluge of music after she had built a wall against it, hadn’t gotten that bad.
But Myeongjeon didn’t want that at all. He would rather have heard wrong.
‘A swimsuit!’
What did she mean by that? Even Myeongjeon, who had indulged in pleasures that would make even the most worldly 21st-century modern person look like a novice, had never worn a woman’s swimsuit in a man’s body.
Of course. Myeongjeon had been a man.
Now he was wearing women’s swimwear in a woman’s body, so it was different, but that was how other people saw it; Myeongjeon himself felt otherwise.
‘Even if I managed to endure skirts and miniskirts, a swimsuit is a bit…’
Even if the loose, fluttery feeling was awkward, he could just think of it as wearing short shorts and leave it at that. Besides, he had adapted surprisingly quickly and had never ended up showing his underwear in front of others.
But wasn’t a swimsuit underwear itself? It was like wearing panties and a bra that didn’t get wet, then telling everyone, “This isn’t underwear~.” What kind of ridiculous thing was that in broad daylight? Wasn’t he ashamed to show his underwear?
Of course, back when he was a man, Myeongjeon had often visited nude beaches overseas and exposed not only his underwear but also what lay beneath it, but as everyone knows, people tend to forget old memories as they age.
‘It’s not like I’m a woman.’
Myeongjeon muttered that inwardly. Swimsuits and things like that were clothes worn by girls and young women, not something he would wear.
Of course, this wasn’t something a person who had initially lived on instant coffee and gukbap, thrown on whatever was in the closet, and gone out, but had later happily eaten sweet coffee, malatang, and Yeopddeok—and, when the kids came over saying, “Hey, this is trendy~,” pretended not to want to go before going along and slyly asking them to AirDrop him the photos too—had any right to say.
But self-perception was important to people. Regardless of what others thought, how a person perceived himself had a profound effect.
Even a kid faking illness could never get out of school if he thought, ‘I want to go home.’ He had to scream like Guan Yu playing baduk, “I’m really sick enough to split my head open!” in a girlish voice to get away with it.
Of course, Myeongjeon’s feelings weren’t enough to make him let out a girlish shriek. Still, he was at least as desperate to go home as Guan Yu shouting, “That’s a three-three! It doesn’t count!”
But escaping was useless. Myeongjeon was good at playing guitar, not at being strong. Even if he tried to get away, Iseo would simply haul him back, leaving him limp and dragging him along, so what could he do?
After several attempts, he decided to give up.
First destination: an otaku shop.
“This is all the rage these days…”
Hyuna introduced merchandise depicting handsome men in various forms. Some were printed on acrylic pieces, some on cushions, some were stickers, and some were rendered in deformed chibi style.
“What makes it popular?”
“This is what they call a virtual YouTuber.”
He thought he might have heard of it before, but maybe not. As he listened to Hyuna explain, Myeongjeon felt dizzy in more ways than one. There was a virtual character whose setting was that of a vampire, but who was actually a little stupid, and that aspect appealed to viewers… blah blah blah.
“So, put simply, they made a fictional character like that into a celebrity, right? It’s not a character from some comic or movie. And people—or rather, you, Hyuna—like those fictional characters. That’s why you buy this stuff.”
“No, it’s not like that. Kucchan is really cute, I’m telling you. And she’s a real person.”
“That sounds exactly like what it is.”
Leaving aside a conversation that sounded less understandable the more he heard it, Myeongjeon picked up an acrylic stand. It depicted a long-haired character in a blue-toned school uniform, holding a mahjong tile.
“Do you like that one? She’s a character who’s the student council president…”
“Her name is Student Council President? What a remarkably half-assed name.”
“No, it’s not her name; that’s her position…”
The character loved mahjong and was extremely serious about it, and blah blah blah. As Hyuna’s explanation grew longer and longer, Myeongjeon looked out the window for a moment. He wanted to go home.
Second destination: a clothing store.
“This is pretty.”
“It is.”
“Aren’t they all pretty similar?”
“What are you talking about…”
Leaving Myeongjeon slumped in a chair from exhaustion, the girls giggled as they looked at clothes. Iseo was fashion-conscious; Seoha surprisingly seemed to know a thing or two; and Hyuna looked like she wasn’t thinking much at all.
‘But Hyuna’s pretty extreme. Even I can tell that much of a difference.’
It might have been time for Myeongjeon to feel something was off, given that he knew women’s clothes better than Hyuna, who had been female from birth, but that was what he thought anyway. The virtue of a modern person was self-hypnosis.
“Do you want to try this on too?”
“I’m good.”
“Don’t be like that. Try it on.”
“It’s not my style.”
Iseo thought that made perfect sense. Aside from wearing something like a skirt for an “important stage,” that girl’s taste was normally all about draping herself in black, white, and formal clothes.
“Then what about this?”
“Hmm… I guess this one might be okay.”
Myeongjeon accepted the clothes without the slightest sense of incongruity, went into the dressing room, and came back out to show them off. The girls looked at him with an “Ooh~.” It had not been long since he had thought, ‘It’s not like I’m a woman,’ yet buying women’s clothes before he knew it was not his fault.
People changed.
The same was true even without assuming an extreme situation in which an old man born in an era closer to war than the twenty-first century suddenly collapsed and died on the street, only for his soul to possess the body of a high-school girl who had cracked her head open and died while riding a kickboard drunk.
It was common for someone who had kicked a ball around with me in elementary school to become the sort of person who spat on the ground and smoked when we met again in high school. The reverse happened just as often, of course. Someone I had thought, ‘That guy will spend his whole life as a delivery rider before dying,’ might suddenly become a solid young man sweating and working hard at a construction site.
In the same way, Myeongjeon had changed a great deal.
When other people did not see him that way, it was difficult to keep treating himself as someone born in an era closer to war than the twenty-first century forever. It wasn’t that Myeongjeon’s will was weak; human beings simply weren’t creatures capable of doing that.
Humans were animals of adaptation. And because Myeongjeon was human, he had adapted. Accepting himself as others saw him was one example of that.
“I can’t wear that.”
Nevertheless, Myeongjeon’s opinion was that he absolutely could not wear a swimsuit of that sort.
“I think it’d look good on you. Suyeon, your skin is so fair. A black bikini like this would suit you perfectly…”
“You wear it! I can’t.”
“Should I? Want me to try it on?”
Third destination: a swimsuit store. Despite Myeongjeon’s irritable answer, Iseo grinned and went into the changing room.
While they waited, a clerk sidled over and asked, “Are you college students?” When they said no, the clerk said, “No, it’s just that she’s so tall… Kheok… I’m sorry…” and disappeared.
“Does it suit me?”
When Iseo emerged saying that, Myeongjeon was speechless for a moment. The swimsuit was a little unbalanced over her underwear, but overall, uh…
‘Am I really allowed to look at this?’
Myeongjeon was suddenly overcome by a strange sense of self-loathing. Was it okay for him to be doing this? Here, among these girls? Well, it wasn’t as if he couldn’t do anything.
“Then you have to try one on too.”
“Why me??”
The scream Myeongjeon let out had at least tried to come close to being a word. Then, like King Seonjo fleeing from the Japanese, Myeongjeon tried to evacuate as quickly as possible, but perhaps because he wasn’t a member of the Jeonju Yi clan, Iseo caught him immediately.
“I want to die.”
And the price of being caught was putting on a rash guard: a cropped rash-guard top that revealed a sliver of his navel, and high-waisted normal-cut bottoms.
Watching the girls fuss over taking photos of themselves nonstop and posting them on Instagram, Myeongjeon muttered those words. He missed Ms. Lee Hyein.
“That was fun.”
“Was it…”
Looking at Hyuna’s face, beaming for once, Myeongjeon muttered that. Honestly, he was tired, and he couldn’t understand why they had to buy this many clothes. Couldn’t they just buy clothes when they had time?
“That’s what makes you wear such gloomy clothes all the time.”
“What’s wrong with these?”
At Iseo’s words—she was at least Myeongjeon’s equal (or so he thought) when it came to wearing gloomy things, such as strange badges and pointless MGM luxury bags—Myeongjeon objected.
“Fashion is a way of expressing yourself. Right? Bands do that sort of thing all the time. They make an appeal through fashion… I don’t know much about it, but I hear the Beatles even sparked some kind of fashion boom back in the day. Shouldn’t we coordinate our outfits too?”
The Beatles had not originated mod fashion, but they had contributed considerably to making it fashionable. Iseo had inadvertently hit on that point, but Myeongjeon fell into a somewhat stronger line of thought.
‘That’s true.’
Myeongjeon—or rather, Ha Suyeon—had used clothing before. He had deliberately worn a skirt that would draw attention during important street performances, for instance. The same went for live recordings.
But that had merely been a means of attracting attention. It was simply a matter of, ‘If I look pretty, they’ll watch me more closely, right?’
Of course, the thought Myeongjeon had just come up with was similar. But the conclusion being similar did not mean the process was.
‘What if Robert Plant had been a frontman with blond hair who kept his shirt on? What if Sid Vicious hadn’t been such a lunatic? What if Axl Rose had been a muscular man in a suit? What if Kurt Cobain had been a neat, well-groomed man instead of a blond man in languid grunge fashion?’
Even so, their musicianship would not have died. But would they have maintained the same popularity they had now?
Fashion definitely affected a band’s popularity. It might not have been a huge influence, but it was too significant to ignore. Even more so when one considered popularity with the public, rather than musical popularity.
And for some reason, Myeongjeon was someone who needed to win the public’s popularity.
‘Right. Let’s try it that way.’
Try anything that could be tried. That was the guideline Myeongjeon had set for winning this audition, though that did not mean he was going to wear a bikini.
* * *
But even if they had coordinated outfits meticulously designed by an invited expert, once they stepped onstage, the clothes would not leap out and sing or play instruments, declaring, “Now it’s my time.”
In the end, all that was secondary. What mattered was practice. An enormous amount of practice, at that. So Myeongjeon drove the kids mercilessly, as though intending to collect ten times over for the ordeal they had put him through at the department store that day.
“What the hell are you doing with that expensive Warwick bass!”
They might not have adapted to the bass, but it didn’t matter. It was their fault for failing to come prepared, not Myeongjeon’s.
“I like adding fills to give it a live feel. But if the next beat falls apart, it’s pointless. What matters is rhythm, pitch, and accents. If you can’t do those things, what’s the point of showing off your playing and saying, ‘I’m good’?”
“And I don’t know whether the drums are rusty from taking time off, or whether they think they’re a major band now because they released an EP, but the beat is off. What’s going on? Should we really turn on a metronome and play from the beginning, going ‘One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four’?”
“Before, it was okay to watch my beat and match it, but not anymore. Why do you keep trying to match me by watching me? The bass and drums have to lock into the beat properly, whether the guitar jumps out or not. Whenever I’m even slightly offbeat, you both go clattering all over the place. What am I supposed to do with this?”
At the first practice, Myeongjeon gave the girls a thorough scolding. It was pitiful to see them so crestfallen, but he thought this was his only chance.
This was exactly when they were liable to get carried away. They felt they had achieved something, that they were professionals now. Thoughts like that needed to be smashed quickly.
Because an audition was a real competition. It did not end just because he was good. They had to be ‘better than everyone else.’
‘Fortunately, there’s not much to scold the keyboard about…’
As Myeongjeon thought that and stopped talking, a phone began vibrating noisily on the practice-room desk. Maybe it was a cellphone. The call he picked up was from PD Park Hwiseok. Was he offering some session work?
“Yes, this is Ha Suyeon.”
“Oh, it’s Park Hwiseok.”
“Yes, PD. What’s up? Do you have a session job for me?”
“No, nothing like that. Am I the sort of person who only calls when I have something like that?”
“That’s not what I meant~”
Even from the first words, there was a tone suggesting he had brought some news. Thinking Hwiseok was terribly fussy, Myeongjeon buttered him up a little. “It’s not that. It’s just a shame we haven’t been able to meet sometime, since I’ve been so busy,” and so on.
“No, what I mean is… A little while ago, you asked me to find out some information about that audition show? Invasion from Seoul? I happened to discuss it over a meal with the relevant staff today. But…”
“But?”
“Apparently, they’re judging it through live performances at the venue? Every single preliminary band. They’re inviting an audience to the venue.”
“What??”
Myeongjeon wondered if he had heard wrong. What did that mean? Completely live? On an audition show?